Ululō
ALBUM
2024
"Give me the full moon! Cries the howling child."
18th-century haiku by Japanese poet Issa Kobayashi
Translation: David G. Lanoue.
Ululō represents the pursuit of hope through constant friction. A journey shaped by the constraints of existence, layered frameworks, and the natural limitations of the human body. Through these ‘loopholes,’ struggles in the physical world transform into ‘warmth,’ embodying a modernized spirit of Romanticism that Koki Nakano has long admired.
1. Trêve 03:50
2. Buoy 02:31
3. Howling ft. Yael Naim 02:52
4. Valves ft. Wayne Snow 03:57
5. Sequel 01:53
6. Dévot 01:44
7. Vectical Pool ft. Wayne Snow 03:11
8. Prodigal Weep 03:28
9. Seraphic June 02:47
10. Breathless Sun 03:20
11. Motsuré ft. Jordy 03:26
Artwork by Cyril Burget
Release day October 25th 2024
Oceanic Feeling
ALBUM
2022
Oceanic Feeling, is a celebration of ambiguity. The album’s title is borrowed from an expression coined by the French writer and musician Romain Rolland in 1927. In a letter written to Sigmund Freud, Rolland described the oceanic feeling as “the sensation of eternity, a feeling of being one with the external world as a whole”.
While this concept of oneness permeates Nakano’s whole album, the music also deals with his inability to fully live in this so-called "oceanic feeling", capturing thus the composer’s longing, frustration and ultimately search for harmony within his own limitations.
Release day May 13th 2022
1. Oceanic Feeling 04:48
2. Mue 03:11
3. Glances 03:13
4. External Cephalic Version 03:38
5. Irié 03:42
6. Funadé 03:10
7. Mirroring 03:38
8. Hydrocode 03:28
9. Port de Bras 04:17
10. Treg 04:03
11. Birth Canal 02:48
12. Body Scan (Edit Version) 03:45
13. Body Scan 06:03
2022
Published by Nø Førmat!
1. Overlay 02:35
2. Bloomer 02:59
3. Near-Perfect Synchronization 02:48
4. Choreographed Mollusks 03:15
5. Minim 02:53
6. Palinopsia 02:21
7. Genou Respirant 03:15
8. Graftage 03:28
9. Berceuse 02:31
10. Train-Train 02:39
11. Faire Le Poirier 03:42
2019
Published by Nø Førmat!
1. Petite pièce pour un inconnu 5:09
2. Silhouette 5:34
3. Supposed to Be a Mistake 8:42
4. D'un pas habile 6:06
5. Introduction I 4:09
6. Pendulum 5:12
7. A Lady Just Quit Smoking 6:38
8. Une fin d'été ensoleillée 5:01
9. Lift 4:08
2017
Published by Nø Førmat!
| PRE-CHOREOGRAPHED
2020
Pre-Choreographed evokes the strong “saudade” for the era when the music and the dance were very close to each other, when they used to function congenially in the society. It also means the state of the music such as “awaiting” or even “missing” the choreography.
That is to say, the character of the music is yet very “raw”, no direction is given.
I always have various images of body movements when I compose. And It helps greatly when I’m to give its own unique structure to each piece.
My music often develops as if they are to respond to body movements that I have as the image in my head.
Romantic music, or some of contemporary music often have a great distance from the dance. And therefore they scarcely arouse my interest.
The devotion to virtuosity or excessive intellectualism have somewhat brought the music far away from the dance. After we have passed the experimental phase of the history of music, I feel that now it is a great time to combine these two art forms back again. Needless to say, this new endeavor is already somewhat on going at the club music scene. But I’d like to show in my very own way, that music and dance are “purely inseparable”.
| LIFT
2017
Koki Nakano's first album Lift is a proposal to revisit the classical format of Chamber Music. Its title, inspired by one of the Classical Ballet’s dramatic gestures, is referring to this very tense and fragile moment in which the dancer (usually a man) holds his partner out at arm's length. By exploring this relationship between movement, balance and space the dancers must show their trust to each other so as to achieve this risky but graceful and delicate move.
Composed within a ten-year period, the nine songs of Lift have been written as an intimate musical diary, offering a clever mix of various influences like Pop, Jazz and Minimal musics. It’s the encounter with the celebrated French cellist Vincent Segal which decided Koki Nakano to move and settle in Paris.
After practicing his compositions together for one year and a half in the Koki’s one-bedroom appartment close to the Buttes-Chaumont Park, they recorded the album in 2016 on the French label Nø Førmat!
